After grasshoppers ruin the crops, eight-year-old Laura Ingalls and her family leave Plum Creek and move to Burr Oak, Iowa, where they experience life in a small town and help manage a hotel.
Orphaned nine-year-old Katie Rose develops a bond with an untamed Mustang on the Stevens' farm where she lives doing chores all day as she dreams of going west to find her uncle.
Jack is practically invisible at home, but when his parents send him to Hazelwood, Iowa, to spend a summer with his odd aunt and uncle, he suddenly makes friends, is beaten up by the town bully, and is plotted against by the richest man in town.
As sixteen-year-old Ellie pursues her two goals--growing the biggest pumpkin in Iowa and losing twenty pounds herself--she strengthens her relationship with her father and meets a young man with interests similar to her own.
Provides a glimpse of life during World War II in both the Netherlands and the United States through the correspondence of Anne Frank and her Iowa pen pals.
